Finally, Rush defines “tea bagging”…sort of

Wednesday’s anti-tax tea bag rallies were a sort of bizarro world for anybody who’s ever been to a San Francisco street demonstration. Nobody at Sacramento’s rally wanted to “Free Mumia” or rip Bush or Cheney or debate Israel and Palestine. Instead, some of the faithful here preferred to call President Obama a Socialist or compare him to Hitler. Paging Medea Benjamin…where are youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu?

We’ll have more to share when we post our photos from Wednesday’s Sacramento gathering later, but first we can all stop snickering about the whole “teabagging” thing. As in: Why do supporters INSIST on using that word? Don’t they know what it means — in the non-Lipton sense? Perhaps after Keith Olbermann’s none-too-subtle mockery of the phrase this week (“If things get too testy, things might just blow up in Fox’s face”) Rush Limbaugh decided to clue in his peeps about what teabagging, ahem, really means.

But I can’t say that on the air, Rush said Wednesday, before the mass national teabagathon. This is a family program. Finally, he said, “think of steeping” tea bags.

Or don’t.

I asked Michael Meckler, the national protest coordinator why they used the phrase and he just kind of shrugged. Said it was still a loose operation and that people could call it whatever they wanted as long as they participated. Maybe it was loud around us, but I don’t think he understood the question.

So for you who are teabag-ignorant, just look up “teabagging” in the Urban Dictionary. And you might want to write a different sign for the next rally. Or, maybe you won’t.